The alliance between Leo Zhang and Evelyn Reed was not a partnership; it was a weaponization of their combined strengths. Leo's office on the 55th floor transformed into the strategic command center for a silent, global war. The centerpiece of the room was now a holographic display, a shimmering globe of data that connected him directly to Evelyn's network of elite auditors.
Evelyn's team was a force of nature. They were the best in the world—forensic accountants, data security experts, and corporate investigators who could smell a lie through three layers of legal obfuscation. And Leo, with his preternatural insight, was their compass.
"Forget the obvious," Leo's voice commanded in an encrypted conference call with Evelyn and her team leads in Berlin, São Paulo, and Singapore. "Finch is too smart to leave a simple trail. We are not looking for a smoking gun. We are looking for the subtle pressure he applied to the system to make it break itself."
The hunt began in Europe. The problem was a logistics algorithm that had become inexplicably inefficient.
"Don't audit the code," Leo directed the Berlin team. "The code is a distraction. Audit the inputs. I want a full spectral analysis of the data feeds from every third-party vendor for the last six months. Look for a pattern, a phantom variable so small it would be dismissed as statistical noise."
For days, Evelyn's team tore through terabytes of data. Then, they found it. A single, recurring data-corruption error—a 0.02% anomaly—emanating from a small data analytics firm that TitanCorp had acquired nine months ago. A firm Finch had personally championed. He hadn't broken the algorithm; he had poisoned the water it drank.
Next, South America. The R&D division was drowning in red tape, their projects stalled by a newly appointed compliance director, Ricardo Vargas.
"He's the weapon," Leo stated. "Forget his reports. Audit him. His finances, his career history, his personal network. Find the leverage."
Evelyn's team in São Paulo was relentless. They discovered that Vargas had a massive, secret gambling debt. Two months before his appointment, that debt had been paid off in full by an anonymous wire transfer from a Cayman Islands holding company. Using her own firm's resources, Evelyn traced the ownership of that company. It was a subsidiary of Alistair Finch's private family trust.
Finally, Asia. The manufacturing plants were plagued by equipment failures.
"It's not the machines; it's the components," Leo insisted to the Singapore team. "Run a full metallurgical and stress analysis on every replacement part installed in the last quarter. Cross-reference the suppliers with Finch's investment portfolio."
The results were damning. The faulty components—gears that wore out too fast, coolant that was subtly diluted—all came from a new, low-cost supplier that had won the contract three months ago. That supplier, in turn, was secretly owned by another Finch shell corporation. He was selling his own company poison and profiting from it.
After two weeks of relentless, twenty-four-hour work, the picture was complete. Leo and Evelyn met via a secure video link. Behind them, the holographic display showed a web of shell corporations, secret payments, and targeted acts of industrial sabotage, all tracing back to a single, dark star at the center: Alistair Finch.
"He's not just sabotaging the company," Evelyn said, her voice a low, clinical hum of pure, righteous fury. "He's using it as his personal slush fund to do it. He's committing systematic, multi-billion-dollar fraud against his own shareholders, against his own employees."
She looked at Leo, her expression one of steely resolve. "You have what you need. This is more than enough to remove him."
"Removing him isn't enough," Leo replied, his voice cold as the space between stars. "He built this system. He wrote the rules. A quiet removal by the board allows him to slip away with his reputation and his fortune intact. It allows him to become a myth."
He looked at the web of evidence they had compiled, a weapon of terrible, undeniable truth.
"I'm not just going to remove him," Leo said. "I'm going to erase him."